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MIT Blackjack

What
began as a simple student pastime to unwind after grueling
courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology evolved
over the 1990s into a legendary run on the blackjack tables
of Las Vegas.

Known as the MIT Blackjack Team, this rotating group
of students and former students pulled off probably the
most amazing run of blackjack winnings in the history
of contemporary gaming. Some casinos estimate that the
MIT Team won in excess of $5 million in more than 10 years
of playing blackjack.

MIT Blackjack Team

The MIT Blackjack Team has since been immortalized in books such
as Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, a documentary Breaking
Vegas and the blackjack movie 21, directed by Oscar® winner
Kevin Spacey. In the beginning, however, the team was little
more than a bunch of college guys getting together to drink beer
and play cards.

In this case, the game was blackjack, and given
that these students and former students were some
of the country's brightest mathematicians and engineers,
it's not really surprising that their pastime evolved
into experiments in the science of probabilities.
After all, calculating probabilities was what led
a math whiz of an earlier generation, Edward
O. Thorp, to develop the card-counting systems
written up in his 1963 and 1966 editions of his
book, Beat the Dealer.

Soon, however, the MIT students' fun turned serious,
as the team began refining a blackjack strategy
and practicing at casino simulations set up in apartments
and warehouses around Boston. Just like the legendary "Master
of Blackjack" Ken Uston and the teams he
assembled during the 1980s, the MIT Blackjack Team
constructed fake casinos and ran through various
scenarios. Team members were required to learn to
count cards while being harassed by pit bosses typical
of those found in Las Vegas casinos.

The team first honed its skills in real-world games
in Boston's Chinatown. Then it began casting about
for investors willing to bankroll the team's forays
into Las Vegas gambling. Those willing to risk their
money on MIT brains often were rewarded far beyond
their hopes. One investors' group reportedly earned
a 154 percent profit on its investment!

According to various sources, the MIT Team tried
several card counting systems and improved upon
them. Among other techniques, they were the first
to use "Ace Tracking" and "Shuffle
Tracking" methods to boost their odds.

For instance, "Ace
Tracking" involved counting in such
a way to determine when a "plus" of
aces would appear, a situation that could boost
their odds of winning by as much as 35 percent.
Ace Tracking was tied to the "Shuffle
Tracking" theory, which contends that
casinos push for fast turnover on blackjack
games so that dealers are hard-pressed to
shuffle decks thoroughly. As a result, small packets
of cards may not be sufficiently mixed up, a situation
that can lead to a "plus" of aces. In
addition, Shuffle Tracking also was the foundation
of the MIT Team's ability to predict when certain
subsets of high-value and low-value cards were
in play.

These arcane techniques gave the MIT Blackjack
tremendous tools for beating the house. However,
the team also coupled their mathematical skills
with a people strategy that nearly blew away the
casinos.

First, casinos typically expected big-money blackjack
players to be middle-aged white men. However, most
of the MIT Team members were Asians and Mediterraneans
such as Greeks, Italians, Lebanese or Saudis. In
addition, a good number of the MIT players were
women, typically discounted as big-money players.
Often team members would pretend to be the sons
and daughters of oil sheiks or rich foreign businessmen,
the spoiled, well-heeled partiers whose money casinos
were eager to take.

Second, the MIT Team's mix of racial-ethnic and
gender identities flew under the radar of the casinos'
surveillance, including that of the dreaded Griffin
Books ("mug books" of card counters
and other undesirables assembled for the casinos
by Griffin
Investigations Inc.).

Finally, however, it was the playing strategy of
the MIT Team that enabled it to scoop up thousands
of dollars at a time. In short, playing as a team,
rather than as individuals, allowed the MIT team
members each to concentrate on a certain skill,
relying on their teammates to keep up with the action.

The MIT Team consisted of three types of players,
called Spotters, Gorillas and Big
Players. The Spotter was the scout. He or she
kept to the minimum wagering limit at the blackjack
table and simply counted the cards. When the Spotter
calculated that the cards were in the team's favor,
he or she signaled to other members to move in on
the table.

The Gorilla only played. He or she picked up the
Spotter's signal and came into the game with large
amounts of money. The Gorilla also was a performer.
He or she dressed like a high roller, often appeared
to be drunk, and was always lavish with bets and
tips. In other words, the Gorilla used the casino's
own high-roller psychology against it. The Gorilla
always quit when the Spotter signaled the odds had
rolled back to the house's favor.

The Big Player was the MIT Team's elite weapon,
a teammate who could both wager and count cards
at the same time. The Big Player had mastered some
of blackjack's advanced wagering strategies, knowing
when to Double Down, Split
Pairs and Double after Splitting. Casinos were
convinced that card counters had to concentrate
so much on counting that they didn't have the brainpower
to master these playing strategies as well. Once
again, MIT was using the casino's own preconceptions
against it.

Eventually, Griffin Investigations and the casinos
began to realize what was going on. Some MIT'ers
were identified and barred, but new crops of players
took their places. Once the connection to MIT was
made, the Griffin agency simply acquired MIT yearbooks
and added students' photos to its mug books.

In 1997 the original team split. However, the split
was more like a one-celled organism dividing itself
to reproduce. While some of the MIT Team members
retired to live off their portions of the winnings,
others continued to play into the early 21st century.
Finally, casinos knew even the second and third
generations of MIT teams, and their decade-long
run was over.

But what a legendary blackjack ride it had been!

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